


inside out and upside down

by easystreets



Series: same kind of sick [1]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Episode: Charlie Catches A Leprechaun, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Paint Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26574508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easystreets/pseuds/easystreets
Summary: St. Patrick's Day is a bullshit holiday.-Why, Charlie?” Dennis says, his voice loud and angry, rattling off the tent cities and cheap apartments surrounding Charlie’s. “Why? People shouldn’t--grown adults shouldn’t do bad things to… to anyone, okay? And if someone like him does a bad thing, he should be punished.” Dennis holds open the door for Charlie and his eyes are so dark that even moths wouldn’t swarm around them, Charlie thinks. No light in them, and if there ever was someone blew it out.“But you do bad things to girls, you got your whole system. So you think you should be punished or like… shot or whatever?” The stairwell leading to Charlie’s apartment is empty, but he still whispers the word shot just in case. “We all do bad things."
Relationships: Charlie Kelly/Dennis Reynolds
Series: same kind of sick [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1979168
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	inside out and upside down

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for sexual assault that's been previously referenced in canon. No graphic detail, but characters do talk about it in a slightly victim-blaming way. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! I wrote this instead of doing English homework! So very productive.

“Charlie,” someone is saying, maybe it’s the leprechaun; whoever it is has their hands all over him softly, “Charlie, we’re at Paddy’s, Charlie, get up.”

The entire car smells like cigarettes and paint and the cheap air fresheners that Dennis buys in bulk at WaWa. Dennis. Where is everyone else? Dennis is tapping him on the shoulder and offering a hand so that he can climb out of the trunk. There is a jarring absence of Dee’s shitty Irish accent or glitter and guns. 

“Careful you don’t step on the paint,” Dennis says, his voice quiet, and _oh_ _shit_ , Charlie thinks, because there’s green paint spilt like the mushy insides of little people all over the interior of Dennis’s car, dripping down onto the license plate. But Dennis isn’t mad-- not the silent anger he gets, with white knuckles and a fake smile like a jagged piece of glass; or the red-hot rage that he wears like a suit of armor.

Instead, Dennis looks… worried. His eyebrows are knit tightly, the way he gets when Mac says something like,  _ my dad loves me, you guys don’t understand, _ or when Dee pretends to call secret made-up boyfriends on the phone with the wires cut. Like Charlie’s in denial of everything in the world maybe ever, instead of a guy who just drank a little too much paint without cutting it.

“I wanna go home, Dennis,” is his first concrete thought, so he says it. “Take me home, kay?” The Range Rover keys click and then Dennis’s hand is on his back and they’re stumbling onto the sidewalk. No, Charlie is thinking, no, I want to go home, not to the bar. His mouth feels glassy and slow, like he swallowed a gobful of Gorilla Glue.

“We can walk to your place,” Dennis says; he unties the sweater around his waist and hands it to Charlie. “It’ll help you sober up.” Sober up? Who the hell wants to be sober on St. Patrick’s Day? Or, like at all?

“Okay, Dennis,” Charlie says. His arms feel foggy, but he manages to slip the sweater on. It’s red and old and moth-torn but Charlie feels better already, what with Dennis’s hand around his waist like he’s a girl or something, it’s nice touching, not bad-- not small hands crawling like half-dead bugs over his body, and that’s when he remembers the last clumsy moments before he’d passed out in the trunk of the Range Rover, with the paint canister clutched tightly to his chest: he’d been whispering about Uncle Jack; there was something almost funny about the name, only maybe he hadn’t been whispering so much as crying and it hadn’t actually been that hilarious. And then, predictable as always, the paint had knocked him out, serenaded him to an empty sleep. Had Dennis heard him rambling about stupid old Uncle Jack all the way from the driver’s seat? Did he even care? Caring wasn’t usually The Gang’s thing. But Dennis was acting way too strange for this to be some sort of strange evil-uncle-and-paint-drinking scheme.

“Dennis,” Charlie says slowly, tripping over air, “was I sayin’ names about Uncle Jack?”

“Uh,” Dennis looks helplessly at the ground, like maybe the guide to the entire universe and what to do with terrible uncles is printed on it. “Uh, yeah.”

“Oh,” Charlie says. They turn into his neighborhood, and Dennis holds out his arm in front of his chest as a car whirs by. Jesus, Charlie thinks. Dennis is being so nice and it hurts because he knows it won’t last forever. Charlie might be an idiot but Dennis is terrified of anybody ever loving him enough, and that’s probably the dumbest thing Dennis could ever think. Because Dennis may be horrible and cruel and he might run over animals in the street and check his reflection in broken beer bottles, but he is the only person who’s ever been gentle with Charlie and that in itself is deserving of love.

“You--you were crying.” Dennis mutters. “Uh, about him. I thought you-- we, uh, all thought you’d just kinda black out and forget about it, because that’s what you usually do, but uh…”

“I’m sorry about the paint,” Charlie says, because those are the only words he can find. He is sorry, kind of, which makes him truthful, and not a liar like Mac’s dad loving him and Dee’s actress dreams. He doesn’t even think about Uncle Jack that much anyway-- okay, sometimes he cries when he looks at family photos or sees lawyer commercials on TV, but that’s normal emotional stuff-- so why does he talk about him when he’s drunk? Why does Dennis give a shit?

“It’s fine, Charlie.” Dennis’s voice is ice-cold now. “I don’t give a shit about the Range Rover, okay? I’m pissed off at your Uncle Jack.”

Charlie shivers, and it’s not even cold out, he’s just… confused. Dennis shoves his hand in the pocket of Charlie’s sweater, so that there's no space in between them. Where Charlie ends, Dennis begins. “Man,” Charlie stumbles. “He’s-- I don’t-- it’s like a long time ago, right?”

“He hurt you?” Dennis says it like it's not a question.

“Well, ya know-- he did some things.” Charlie admits. “ _Long_ time ago.”

“You were crying, you know,” Dennis all-of-the-sudden says. “You were begging him to stop, to go away. Even Frank was worried. He gave me his gun, you know.”

“For--for what?” Charlie says, wrenching himself away from Dennis. “Dennis, I don’t get where you’re going with this; are you gonna shoot me?”

“No, you _idiot_.” Dennis frowns. “I’m not going to shoot you. But I am going to show Uncle Jack what’s what.”

“Well, like… why?”

“Why, Charlie?” Dennis says, his voice loud and angry, rattling off the tent cities and cheap apartments surrounding Charlie’s. “Why? People shouldn’t--grown adults shouldn’t do bad things to… to _anyone_ , okay? And if someone like him does a bad thing, he should be punished.” Dennis holds open the door for Charlie and his eyes are so dark that even moths wouldn’t swarm around them, Charlie thinks. No light in them, and if there ever was someone blew it out.

“But you do bad things to girls, you got your whole system. So you think you should be punished or like… shot or whatever?” The stairwell leading to Charlie’s apartment is empty, but he still whispers the word shot just in case. “We all do bad things.”

“Charlie--” Dennis says, squirming in the stairwell, almost shy-- Charlie hasn’t seen Dennis shy in ages; now that he’s coming down from the paint Dennis’s features have come into focus and he can see the tell-tale signs of nervousness: Dennis’s bitten lips, his hands wringing together, angry lines permanently pressed into his otherwise wrinkle-free skin. “Charlie, you know that’s different. They agreed. You didn’t.”

And maybe Charlie disagrees. Maybe he isn’t quite sure. Maybe he thinks that Mac is right and that Dennis is definitely going to rot in Hell for all eternity. 

But then Dennis’s Adam’s Apple bobs and his face crumples for a moment. Just a moment, but it’s there-- something breaks inside of Dennis, a little bit of whatever’s still holding him up after all these years-- and then Dennis’s arms are wrapped around him and he’s breathing a little too quickly against Charlie.

“Are you… are you okay, man?” Charlie asks, because Dennis is many things but he is not the type to be sobbing uncontrollably in the stairwell of Section 8 housing. “Like, is this about Mrs. Klinsky and all of that shit?”

Dennis pushes him away just as quickly as he’d latched on. “No!” he yells, a bit too loudly. “No,” he whispers, more composed, his face red and blotchy, although Charlie’d never tell him so, “it’s not. Let’s get you home, Charlie.”

They clamber up the stairs until they make it to Charlie’s apartment, which is uncomfortably empty. 

“So,” Dennis says, once Charlie’s in his pajamas and he’s wiped most of the paint off his face, “I should get going. I have to drive all the way up to Manhattan tomorrow, can you believe it?” His face is contorted in a smile, like he’s going to Manhattan to buy shoes or a dress shirt instead to kill or at the very least maim Uncle Jack. 

“Stay,” Charlie says, even though saying what they want has never quite been the Gang’s thing. Or his thing, really. But Dennis looks grey and washed-out and he’s already hitchhiked home once today, and a guy that looks like him in a neighborhood like this is just asking to get mugged. “Y’ can sleep on the couch with me.”

Dennis’s face wrinkles up in disgust for a moment. “Yeah, fuck it. I’d rather sleep here than have Dee and Mac all up in my-- my trip tomorrow. Yeah, whatever,” he says, like he’s talking to someone not in the room, someone very far away. “Gotta get up early anyways, I don’t want them nosing around in my business.”

Dennis takes off his dress shirt and pants and folds them neatly on top of the TV set before awkwardly slipping under the covers. He stares up at the ceiling for what feels like forever before sighing loudly.

“You think bad people deserve bad things?”

Charlie thinks hard for a moment. “This about Uncle Jack?”

“Well, kinda.” Dennis says. “It’s more about me. Do you think I’m a terrible person? Do you think I deserved that-- perverted librarian shit or whatever because it was like she _knew_ I was gonna be a bad person?”

It doesn’t really make sense, so Charlie tells him so. “I don’t really get what you’re tryna say, dude.”

“Charlie,” Dennis huffs, exasperated. “Do you think I deserved it?”

“No.” Charlie tugs the blanket over his head so that he can think better. “I mean, how does that make sense?”

“Am I a bad person?”

“Nah, dude, I mean... you’re good to me.” Charlie finally says. All the questions are kinda confusing and his head is swimming now that he’s finally coming down from the paint. “I know you’ve got my back.” 

“Alright,” Dennis says. He throws the blanket over his head too so that they’re both under it, “Thanks, Charlie.”

“Yeah, man. Goodnight.” Charlie says. Dennis is smiling, just a little, because he thinks Charlie can’t see or doesn’t care, and it’s nice-- small and comfortable and unmoving. 

“Night, Charlie,” Dennis pats him on the arm and lets his hand linger there for longer than usual. It’s one of those things that they’ll probably never talk about. Just like tonight. “Big day tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Charlie says, and tries to remember the curvature of Dennis’s smile, in case the next time he sees his face he’s on the news.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this, please comment! Also funny story: I accidentally almost sent this to a potential employer because I usually have the link to my resume copy-pasted. Y'all. I nearly died.
> 
> Edit: Hey! I wrote a second part to this and (*mac voice*) it's totally sweet! It's listed at the top of this fic in the series part.


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